Addressing a persistent debate in the field of dyslexia research, scientists have disproved the popular theory that deficits in certain visual processes cause the spelling and reading woes commonly suffered by dyslexics.
A new technique might allow women diagnosed with cancer the opportunity to have children when chemotherapy and radiation treatments rob them of their fertility, researchers at the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center have found. By having her eggs frozen before she begins cancer treatments, a woman can preserve the hope of one day having a baby.
In the first clinical study of a new blood protein associated with prostate cancer, researchers have found that the marker, called EPCA or early prostate cancer antigen, can successfully detect prostate cancer in its earliest stages. At the same time, the marker successfully avoids the problem of false positive results that plagues prostate-specific antigen (PSA) testing.
The US Food and Drug Administration was “the single greatest obstacle to doing anything effective” about Vioxx, said FDA drug safety officer David Graham at an unprecedented roundtable of medical whistleblowers sponsored by the Public Library of Science and the Government Accountability Project. In comments that echoed his now infamous testimony to the US Senate Finance Committee, Graham said that, “Nearly 60,000 people probably died from that drug. That’s as many of our soldiers that were killed in the Vietnam war [who] died as a result of Vioxx use. And FDA had the opportunity, the responsibility, to stop that and didn’t.”
Omega-6 Levels in Brain Linked to Depression
A new study found that depressed rats had higher levels of Omega-6 fatty acids in their brains. How do omega-6 fatty acids, which are the polyunsaturated fats found in most vegetable oils, cause depression? And how do omega-3 fatty acids alleviate it?
Click to continue reading about how omega-6 fatty acids cause depression and how omega-3 fatty acids relieve it, as well as more about the study on rats.
You can also learn more about the Benefits of Fish Oil and Omega-3 Fatty Acids at the website.
A new estimate of the effect of an earthquake along the Puente Hills fault shows that damage could occur on an unprecedented scale. An earthquake of magnitude 7.2 to 7.5 would result in 3,000 to 18,000 deaths, 142,000 to 735,000 displaced households, and up to $250 billion in property damage, according to research by the U.S. Geological Survey and the Southern California Earthquake Center at the University of Southern California. The disaster would be the costliest in U.S. history.
Pre–K students are expelled at a rate more than three times that of children in grades K–12, according to a primary study by researchers at Yale on the rate of expulsion in prekindergarten programs serving three- and four-year-olds.The study, titled “Pre–kindergartners Left Behind: Expulsion Rates in State Prekindergarten Systems,” is based on data gathered in the National Prekindergarten Study (NPS). The paper reports on expulsion rates by program setting (public school, Head Start, private providers), gender, and race/ethnicity. The pre–K report also presents expulsion data from all 40 states that fund prekindergarten programs.
Hello there science bloggers, anyone with interests in climatology and geomorphology who would be interested in reading my research paper that I am hoping to get published. A copy of the file can be found here. Please read and post comments and then I can see what work still needs to be done.
I see Blogebrity just added Ben Sullivan as a B-list blogebrity. Congratulations.
Tufts researchers recently reported that while the leading source of calories in the average American diet used to be from white bread, that may have changed. Now, according to preliminary research conducted by scientists at the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, Americans are drinking these calories instead. The research was presented in abstract form at the Experimental Biology Conference in April of this year and a more comprehensive paper is being developed.
It’s a cloudless July afternoon in Etosha National Park in northern Namibia, and ecologist Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell is scanning the horizon for elephants. “It’s so fantastic here,” she says. “We’re constantly seeing elephants, rhinos, zebras, ostriches—it’s the Garden of Eden.” A research associate in the Stanford University School of Medicine, O’Connell-Rodwell has come to one of Africa’s premiere wildlife sanctuaries to explore the mysterious and complex world of elephant communication. She and her colleagues are part of a scientific revolution that began nearly two decades ago with the stunning revelation that elephants communicate over long distances using low-pitched sounds that are barely audible to humans.
Today’s computers and other technological gizmos operate on electronic charges, but researchers predict that a new generation of smaller, faster, more efficient devices could be developed based on another scientific concept – electronic “spin.” The problem, however, is that researchers have found it challenging to control or predict spin – which keeps practical applications out of reach.
With the unusual opportunity that human leprosy infections provide for study of human immune responses, scientists have discovered how the body’s early warning system prompts a rapid immune response by two separate armies of defensive cells. The finding helps explain why, when threatened by microbes like the leprosy bug, this initial defense sometimes succeeds in limiting the damage, but in other cases yields to a dangerous, spreading infection.
Following the recent deadly outbreak of equine herpes virus at Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby, a Cornell University virologist says his preliminary research indicates that vaccines containing weakened live viruses, called modified live vaccines (MLV), appear to be more effective in preventing horse herpes than other more widely used vaccines.
Data from the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens mission are providing convincing evidence that Saturn’s moon Phoebe was formed elsewhere in the Solar System, and was only later caught by the planet’s gravitational pull. One way to unlock Phoebe’s secrets is using Cassini’s Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), developed by a team of US (JPL), French and Italian (ASI) scientists and engineers. The science team is made by a large international group of US, Italian, French and German scientists led by the University of Arizona.
Three Johns Hopkins engineering undergraduates — two of them starters on the women’s basketball team — have designed and built a system that uses sound emitters in the ball and on the backboard to enable blind people to play basketball. “There are people all over the country who are waiting for something like this,” said Mike Bullis, business services development manager for Blind Industries and Services of Maryland, a group that aids the visually impaired and sponsored the research project. “There are blind athletes who want an audible ball. And there are school- age children who can benefit from the hand coordination that comes from playing ball.”
Long pointed kitchen knives should be banned to reduce violent crime and deaths from stabbing, say accident and emergency doctors in this week’s BMJ. Violent crime is on the increase in the UK, say the authors, whose experience of working in emergency departments suggests that kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings.
Researchers at Yale School of Medicine and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine have found that female sexual dysfunction (FSD) affects 48.2 percent of women in a new study and that these women had decreased sensation in the clitoris, which increased the risk of sexual dysfunction. “There is a paucity of data available on FSD and this study brings attention to the possibility of a neurological cause for the dysfunction,” said lead author Kathleen Connell, M.D., assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology & Reproductive Sciences at Yale School of Medicine.
